But what if the inputs don’t actually matter? What if it’s the technology itself?įorty years ago, the late Neil Postman delivered a keynote address at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which, that year, had taken George Orwell and his works as its special topic, with particular reference to “ 1984.” The book’s dark prophecy of a world controlled by the censorious hand of Big Brother hadn’t come to pass, at least in a literal sense, but there were still many questions-as there are today-about where we might see Big Brother’s shadow. These efforts are largely driven by the hope that if we can control the inputs of the information ecosystem, and pump in a lot of truth and democracy, we might be able to save the country from irrevocable internal conflict. Journalists have published fact-checks of politicians, government officials have created short-lived boards to combat disinformation, school systems have adopted media-literacy curricula to teach children how to take in what’s good and reject what’s bad. Those of us who have appointed ourselves stewards of discourse have spent a great deal of energy trying to build some consensus, however imaginary and manufactured, but we are losing. Most Americans believe that we are in deeply polarized times sixty-five per cent of respondents to a Pew survey last year said that they were “exhausted” when thinking about politics. Similar questions, of course, have been asked again and again, for the past decade or so, about American political life. If they feel like you cut them off or snaked their wave, they will transform, however fleetingly and unconvincingly, into the saltiest local they’ve seen on Instagram. They have a vague but often errant understanding of surf ethics, and it rarely translates into politeness. Today, it’s as though the kooks are replaying, in their heads, the hundreds of social-media videos they’ve watched. Most of the time, he wouldn’t even know the surf etiquette he had violated, and, if you explained it to him, he’d listen. Before, a typical kook at Linda Mar would cut you off, fall, and apologize while laughing at himself. Since the widespread distribution of WorldStarHipHop-style surf videos-which show surfers screaming at one another over snaked rides and tussling on the beach-I have noticed a discomforting edge in the water. Other changes are more subjective and harder to parse. When it’s yellow, you might find fewer than twenty people in the water, even if the actual waves are no different from supposedly green conditions. When the color-coded report is green, for example, the crowds arrive. The third is the popularity of short-form surf content on social media, which, like so much of what you find on the Internet, highlights little fights or asks stupid rhetorical questions aimed at inciting as much conflict as possible.Īll this has undeniably changed Linda Mar. The second is the ubiquity of surf-camera Web sites that live-stream the waves and provide constantly updating, color-coded reports on the conditions. The first is the wide-scale production of cheap soft-top surfboards, which are floaty enough to catch pretty much every mushy wave that rolls through. Linda Mar was always crowded, but it’s become much worse recently, thanks to three separate innovations. (I won’t name the other spots here perhaps the most illuminating thing I can say about Lindy is that I can break surfer taboo and publish its name because it’s already the most packed spot in the area.) Now I go because I am older and the waves at the better beaches are sometimes too big and scary. At first, it was because I was a beginner, and Lindy is one of the few places you can surf within a short drive of San Francisco without being sucked out to sea. I’ve been surfing at Linda Mar on and off for about fifteen years now. The spot is best known for an oceanfront Taco Bell, which is great in theory, but in practice is plagued by a perpetual sogginess and the hundreds of surfers who clog its parking lot every weekend. As far as Northern California beaches go, Lindy isn’t particularly pleasant or pretty the sand is gross, the water’s cold and slate gray on account of the persistent fog that hangs around the area. About ten miles south of San Francisco, there’s a public beach called Linda Mar.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |